The death of truck drivers in the last month, six in total – an unprecedented figure – increases concern about finding solutions to avoid these “workplace accidents.”
The Single Union of Freight Transport Workers and Related Branches (SUTCRA), on the 12th, carried out a 24-hour strike, – with support from Nueva Palmira -, under the slogan: “In defense of life. Enough of work accidents in cargo transportation.” At the same time, they delivered a document to President Luis Lacalle and the authorities of the National Road Safety Unit (UNASEV), demanding attention to what they describe as “historical problems.”
Fatal accidents
In traffic accidents on routes involving trucks, “in the last 20 days of October, eight lives were lost: five drivers working behind the wheel and three collaterally.” Added to these chilling figures is the death of another driver “in an accident recorded on November 11; “There are a total of six dead truck drivers,” the general secretary of SUTCRA, Damián Fernández, told EL ECO.
The absence of Sitrac
What is happening “is being reported in all areas. We ask for a comprehensive control system, a time control system, which does not exist in transportation today. In 2018 we managed to get a schedule control system signed, which was the famous Sictrac” (Comprehensive Freight Transportation Control System). It gave the guarantees to begin to regularize the sector, because the Ministry of Transportation, the BPS, DGI and the Ministry of Labor were there. As for the information, it was a device that was in the truck, the colleague was going to register when he got on the unit and kept all control of the day. Well, that was signed in 2018, the government changes and the first thing it does is suspend Sictrac. And there we were left helpless again, without any control system in the sector until today,” he explains.
The fatal distraction
This means that “by not having an efficient control system, a range of alternative payments opens up, which has an impact on workers’ workload. We are talking about insurance, they pay you by percentage, fuel savings, per trip. The payment system is based on productivity, which generates a recharge of between 14 and 18 hours per day, when the colleague is driving a truck with 45,000 kilos on the route. We are talking about physical and mental exhaustion, and because of this overload of hours, we are prone to, at any second of distraction, blinking, swerving, tipping over or grabbing a motorcycle or car.”
Those who win
If there is no control system, “the most beneficiaries are the owners of the cargo. By having a sector such as transportation completely without control, alternative payments are generated and it is the shippers who end up setting the price for freight. The loaders take out the biggest fish,” says Fernández.
The lack of rest
With 18 hours of work a day in some cases, “the colleagues first do not have places to rest, with the minimum conditions. Second, the saddest thing, they don’t have time to rest, or to wash their faces and continue. This also leads to poor nutrition, companions eat very poorly, which generates physical and mental problems. It is very worrying. “We are talking about something very deep, very cruel.”
He maintains, at the same time, that, although the situation occurs in all branches of the sector, where it is most acute is “in the forestry sector, with one or two overturns per day.”
Another aspect “is the increase in the weight of the loads. “Before, the trucks carried trailers with 27,000 kilos, now there are tri-trains that transport up to 74,000 kilos.” During the previous administration, the routes remained more restricted for heavy transportation, “but the current Ministry of Transportation released them,” the union points out. “Imagine if a colleague with a 40,000 kilo truck is dangerous, as it is with one of 75,000.”
The truck as a silo
He also considered that “the grain sector is criminal. With this issue that there is no control system or anything, the companion in the grain harvest can be loaded for 2 or 3 days; The shippers use it from silo to truck, because it has no cost. So, imagine, two or three days standing there to unload, eating poorly, worrying about the unit, worrying about the family, parents almost absent. “Many boys and girls are facing the sad reality of losing their fatherly image.”
The claim
“Create a transportation control system that is efficient, that is totally reliable for the workers, that maintains the same conditions, that is, that has all the corresponding organizations: BPS, DGI, Ministry of Transportation, Power Executive. It is the way to end the accident rate that exists in the sector,” said the union member.
Figures
“In 2023 there were 501 accidents involving trucks, of which 439 resulted in minor injuries, another 29 with serious injuries and in CTI, 36 died, of which 7 were drivers and 29 collaterally, 36 in total.” But we are not talking about numbers, but about lives and “avoidable deaths.” These are UNASET data, “but we have a discrepancy with UNASET, because for us it is not a traffic accident, but a work accident,” says Fernández.
